When we launched the Vioxx recall blog we were hoping to benefit from the advertising revenue that it would generate (we were closely monitoring how fast the rates were rising at Overture), what we did not know was if we would be successful in having the blog pop up in search results. And then as soon as we launched and made some progress and declared that the Vioxx recall blog was a success, we were attacked by spammers and crooks, hired by Vioxx attorneys (Related article: Vioxx recall battle in cyber-space). Of course, we were discouraged but we have never given up on the strong connection between ebusiness and content management since it is a model that we have tested dozens of times in the eCreativa network of online media properties.
Since we used a blog instead of a website, success at Yahoo and MSN was immediate. In fact, within a matter of days, Vioxx recall blog was on page one. But the really depressing news was that we were on page 13 in Google. Now like every other content manager and nano-publisher, that is as good as not being found at all. In any case, Google has driven us nuts to a point that we have simply stopped worrying about on a day to day basis. We have now started to take Google for its word: "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
And Google has shown that it really does what it says. Vioxx recall blog is now on page one of Google search results. Indeed it took Google more than four weeks to get there (Yahoo was way too fast and we have now learned that if you want something to be found right away, Yahoo is the best to find it if it is in a blog form), but it did make it. While this is great news for us, it was not so good news for people who were looking for Vioxx information. Google continued to serve them with outdated results even as the story was changing several times a day during the month of October and November of 2004.
Message to Google engineers: You have to do something so that you can provide newly published information faster even if it does not have a high PageRank (getting "votes" to a new page can take days/weeks, particularly for small websites). Sometimes information changes too fast and that is a limitation of the PageRank system. In this context, Yahoo does a terrific job since it captures content from a blog within a matter of hours. What Google may want to do is to provide an option that allows users to search "most popular" and "most fresh".
Recommended article: Advertisers motivate content developers
Since we used a blog instead of a website, success at Yahoo and MSN was immediate. In fact, within a matter of days, Vioxx recall blog was on page one. But the really depressing news was that we were on page 13 in Google. Now like every other content manager and nano-publisher, that is as good as not being found at all. In any case, Google has driven us nuts to a point that we have simply stopped worrying about on a day to day basis. We have now started to take Google for its word: "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
And Google has shown that it really does what it says. Vioxx recall blog is now on page one of Google search results. Indeed it took Google more than four weeks to get there (Yahoo was way too fast and we have now learned that if you want something to be found right away, Yahoo is the best to find it if it is in a blog form), but it did make it. While this is great news for us, it was not so good news for people who were looking for Vioxx information. Google continued to serve them with outdated results even as the story was changing several times a day during the month of October and November of 2004.
Message to Google engineers: You have to do something so that you can provide newly published information faster even if it does not have a high PageRank (getting "votes" to a new page can take days/weeks, particularly for small websites). Sometimes information changes too fast and that is a limitation of the PageRank system. In this context, Yahoo does a terrific job since it captures content from a blog within a matter of hours. What Google may want to do is to provide an option that allows users to search "most popular" and "most fresh".
Recommended article: Advertisers motivate content developers